Some recent listener feedback

Hi guys,
Just a heads up, I find your appraisals are not consistent 😜
Take for instance the "oooooh" and "arrrrr" for Tamron's lodged patent for a 115mm 1.4f lens, now if I remember, I mentioned Nikon's 105mm 1.4 some episodes back, and the fanfare was like, "I yeah, not that much into bokeh or words to that effect.
Well at least you can walk into a shop right now and purchase it, it's not just on the drawing board. Anyway I had my grumpy old man rant for the day.
Keep the pods coming😊
Cheers Carl
Wow, made the podcast again.
I really enjoyed the Landscape photographer of the year book. It has great photos of the English countryside along with a short story of how the photo was made and the camera settings. It was helpful for me to see what kind of photos were chosen as the winners.
Have a good one, Bruce, love the show.
Greg H.
Hi guys, another interesting podcast.
Very surprised and disappointed to hear Glynn's info about the liquidation of L&P. They are just near my home and I recently bought a Tenba messenger bag from them. I concur with Glynn's comments about their bags, they are very well designed and well made. Another great photography store lost to us.
Keep up the great work,
Peter Sambell

David Kembrey put himself front and centre with some photos to critique.

Whales

Charlotte

Landscape

A former work colleague of mine, Luke Gemmill, reached out looking for some volunteer photographers to shoot some action stuff involving cars, and stunt drivers.

For upcoming performances for this year and next, I am looking to invite, half decent amateur photographers / videographers who want to be into our inner sanctum for the love of photography not money, to shoot “action shots” of our cars and drivers while we perform. Photographers would capture high-speed drifts, handbrake turns, hair raising head to head crossovers and the cars being driven on two wheels.
Our next major show is Royal Geelong Show. We will be performing three shows on Friday 14th October 2016 and Saturday 15th October 2016 – afternoon, evening and night performances.
We also have a show on Wednesday 5th October 2016 in Pinnaroo, SA – but I doubt I will find any photographers out that way.

What we can offer the photographer/s:
· Credit for any photos published – high chance of photos being ran on websites, social media, posters, in newspapers, in magazines etc etc

· Free access to the show

· I’ll buy them lunch / dinner

· Might be able to take them for a ride in one of the cars on another performance day

If this sounds like something you’d be happy to be a part of, give Luke a yell.
You can find him on Facebook here.

Okay I am going to take Glynn to task over his recent comments over the pricing of the Canon 5d MkIV.
The RRP in Australia is $5699.00 deducting GST this is $5180.91 which is about US$3886.26.
B&H are selling the MKIV for US$3,499 which in Australian dollars is $4,664.65, after adding GST this gives a total price of $5131.08 and this is not taking into account any freight, insurance and that you have no Australian warranty and need an adaptor for the battery charger.
Currently I have found two Australian retailers who have the MKIV at $4,988, so Australian retailers are very competitive in their pricing. To demonstrate this further I look at Canon’s other cameras here in Australia and Compared to B&H.
AUS $ US $ Conversion Inc GST
Canon 6d $1,698.00 $1,499.00 $1,998.37 $2,198.21
Canon7D 2 $1,999.00 $1,499.00 $1,998.37 $2,198.21
Canon 5D 3 $2,998.00 $2,499.00 $3,331.51 $3,664.66
You will note that after accounting for GST we compete very well. If you are a Business then you will of course be able to deduct the GST so it becomes irrelevant.
More importantly I think Canon have decided to move the price point of what is often considered a professional camera given there is a many other Prosumer cameras in their range. Will I buy a MkIV? Not at this point in time. Does it worry me? No. If I was a professional would I buy one? Yes it’s a tax deduction after all.
On a side note the UK price for the MK IV is £3,599.00 about AUS$4,658.00 but then they do have a 20% VAT.

Carl posted a link to this video about a field test of the Nikon D5.
And HE had a go at Glynn as well, about Glynn’s gushing over the Tamron 115mm f1.4 lens, but being less enthused for Nikon’s 105mm 1.4 offering.
David Marland sent me this video link just before we started recording, hence why I hadn’t had a chance to watch it. Facebook | YoutubeGlynn was intrigued by a Photokina story about a 3D printing photobooth. Sadly, he couldn’t find the link, and instead, came up with THIS one from 2014.
If you DO happen to find a link to the one Glynn mentioned, let me know.
He also found lighting kits for drones!
SanDisk has announced the world’s first 1Tb SDXC card.
He also sent me a link to the GoPro Karmadrone UAV, but I don’t think he talked about it.

September 18, 2016

This week, the world said goodbye to Greta Friedman. You might not know her name, but it’s almost a certainty that you’ve seen her before!
Last week, after the announcement of the winner of the Australian Photographer of the Year Award, Ken Duncan had a bit of a rant about what the Awards really do (or DON’T) represent:

As an honorary life member of the AIPP I am concerned about the regulations and judging criteria of their Photo Awards after seeing the results from this years competition.
Congratulations to Lisa Saad for winning the 2016 Australian Professional Photographer Awards with a series of illustrations.
With no disrespect to Lisa who is obviously a very talented person I just personally don’t get it. How these illustration could be considered photographs as lovely as judges may think they are.
The word Photography comes from the Greek words Photos: Light and Graphos: Drawing so photography is ‘drawing with light’.
This illustration and the others from the series have little to do with reflected light but more about creation by manipulating and creating pixels.
I believe the AIPP have lost their way with the APPA awards as they seem to be hijacked by manipulators. Now I don’t have a problem with post processing to a degree but when it gets to to point of having no connection to reality it then enters the world of illustration. If this trend is going to continue unchallenged and not looked at then may be the awards should really be renamed. The initials obviously no longer stand for the Australian Professional Photography Awards so maybe they really need to call them what they have become the ‘Australian Professional Photoshop Awards’.

September 11, 2016

This week, as my exploration into the world of Linux continues, I discovered an option in Lightroom which is turned OFF by default. But switching it on provides the ability to transfer my RAW files to Linux with metadata (keywords and all) in tact! Woohoo!
This is done on a “per-catalogue” basis, so if you use mutliple catalogues like I do, you will need to activate it for each one.Here’s a video from Julianne Kost to guide you through it.

Hasselblad has just announced the world’s first 50MP mirrorless body.
With an impending Sony announcement, I speculate (given that the big H uses Sony’s sensors) on whether or not similar specs will appear in the much-rumoured A99 A-mount sucessor.

Luc Moreau chimed in, via the comments on the last episode’s show notes:

“Glad to hear you discovered Darktable. that’s what I use since some time and I love it. For Mac users there’s also a package ready to use. You’ll probably find out that the XMP files don’t import to other programs I’m afraid. If you persue this make sure you get the latest versions from the PPA unless Mint already provides them.

Still listening… For Panoramas you have to install hugin and a simple script. Google it that’s how I found it ??
For Import from Lightroom there might be something but that’s a problem I don’t have so I never researched it”

Thanks Luc!

Greg H also came back to me via the comments:

“Thanks for sharing the drone information on the show. Also, I just ordered the landscape photographer of the year book – collection 8 for $9 on Amazon. Other years are $45.”

Back from his U.S. jaunt, Glynn heard from Doug Gimsey, who happened to pick up a gong from Australian Geographic. Congrats Doug!
The image was one he had had kicking around in his mind for a while, and he asked for Glynn’s help in bringing it to fruition.

Glynn also came across this NASA video (which I’m pretty sure we’ve featured in the past…. could be wrong) showing Venus transiting in front of the sun. A reat example of using different objects to depict scale and size.

“Yesterday I set out to buy the 24-70 2.8 G master. Drove 40 miles one way. Got to the store, held it in my hands and then walked out the door without it. Just couldn’t seem to reason with myself why I needed it. I’m not a pro, I’m just a picture taker. So I went home and put a Sakar 135 2.8 manual lens that I bought 22 years ago for $6 on my A 7 mkII. Took a photo of my wet dog and called it a day.”
– Millie Latimer

Kudos to Millie for not being swayed by gear lust!
Paul from hedgeformac wrote to tell me about a competition that LaCie is running at the moment. You could win a 12BIG NAS tower with 48TB of storage. Go here to be in the running! Thanks for the tip, Paul!
Greg H. commented on last episode’s discussion of drones (UAV’s) and their use or misuse:

“Please stop spreading the misinformation that a drone hit an aircraft. It is really damaging to the industry and it never happened. It turned out to be a plastic bag.
Thanks,
Greg”